Physical Media. How long till its dead? Never I wish!

I love going to my local games shops ( independents) to get my gaming fixes and love peeling off the plastic sheet , its a bit of a fetish!

I also love buying second hand games and I collect gaming gems, ( Shenmue 1 & 2, panzer dragoon saga to name a few ). I am thinking there will be know second hand market when games become download only and that second hand shops selling these games will disappear.  And retail gaming in general will change forever, going shopping soon will be so boring because there will be NO SHOP'S to look in!!

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo etc will have all the control on the market they have always desired.

I like boxes, paper instruction manuals  and game disc's and want them to stay!! I like to look at my collection from time to time and thinking that my collecting days of physical media are soon to come to an end pisses me off big time.


So my question is-


How long will it be till its a download only gaming world and weather you think that sucks or not?

If you noticed a thread down below with no title, i messed up sorry! submit 2.

i personally think that's a long way away, especially with internet speeds, caps, est

I definitely think it'll still be a while, 2 maybe 3 generations down the line; we'll definitely see more a shift towards that, it's started already. My only issues with it is that my internet speed is nowhere near fast enough to make downloading 9GB worthwhile, I personally have no attachment to going to my local GAME (a UK game chain) and buying games... I do love 'new game smell' though.